Social:Asset reuse

From HandWiki

The reuse of Intellectual Property (IP) assets (also known as Software Assets[1]) is a strategy that many, in particular IT, companies are pursuing.[2][3]

The strategy for reusing non-IT related assets is called Asset recovery. However, the term recovery is not being applied to Intellectual Property (IP) assets.[4][5]

These IP assets (or software assets) can be defined as (see Forrester [6]): Internally developed or acquired software artifacts that IT services vendors use to automate a particular business process or aspect of product development for a range of clients. Software assets provide 30% to 90% of the solution that the client is looking for and are reused across multiple engagements.

Benefits for the client

Amongst other benefits, the key advantages of reusing assets are:

  1. Increase delivery efficiency
  2. Innovate from a higher level
  3. Use best practices
  4. Reduce risk
  5. Offer wider array of flexible solutions.

Requirements

In order to implement Asset Reuse within a major company, it takes at least:

  • a system where to store and retrieve relevant assets
  • a management system to handle the asset management
  • a communication set-up to promote the reuse of piled up assets.

Implications

Till now a number of companies have tried to implement asset reuse. However, common implications are:

  • the use of more than one asset repository
  • the operation model: set-up, funding, and maintenance of the required asset management system including success tracking over a long time
  • permanent cross-company communication of the asset management system strategy and its latest elements

References